Nature’s reminder

Two North African countries of Morocco and Libya were hit by more than 8,000 deaths and thousands of injuries or missing within days. Morocco was slammed by the worst earthquake in a century, killing almost 3,000 people and displacing others as everything they had was ruined. It was revealing in more ways than the tragedies that unfolded in the north African continent such as the deluge in Libya where more than 20,000 people are feared to have died and the earthquake in Morocco where the death toll is more than 5000 have not attracted global concern. The eastern Libya floods killed 5,500 officially while unofficially the toll is around 20,000 and over 7000 wounded. More than 30,000 people in Libya’s eastern city of Derna are now homeless as a result of the devastating flash floods that Storm Daniel caused. Till date it is not possible to confirm how many lives have been lost in these two tragedies but it is clear the number could only multiply. In Libya, there are fears that more than 20,000 people have died in devastating floods that began on September 11. Officially, the death toll in the Libyan floods is around more than 5,000 but which is likely to increase, At least another 10,000 people are missing.Two dams collapsed, releasing an estimated 30 million cubic metres of water into the city of Derna. The immediate cause for the Libyan deluge was extreme rain – the equivalent of a year’s rainfall in 24 hours. Rainfall in Libya occurs during the winter months, with average annual rainfall of 26 mm and great variations from place to place and from year to year. Libya has been devastated by six years of civil war after the fall of its dictator Col.Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. After Gaddafi’s killing which also ended his long reign of 42 years, Libya was engulfed in a civil war, and was made subject to international sanctions the same year. On September 8, 2023 a devastating earthquake of the magnitude of 6.8 R struck the country at 22.11 UTC or 3.41 a.m. Indian Standard Time struck Morocco at 18.5 km depth. The epicentre was in the High Atlas Mountains, 71km (44 miles) south-west of Marrakesh. It has a population of 840,000 inhabitants and was the most impacted city. It is the strongest instrumentally recorded earthquake in Morocco, the deadliest in the country since the 1960 Agadir earthquake and the second-deadliest earthquake of 2023 after the Turkey–Syria earthquake. The World Health Organization estimated about 300,000 people from Marrakesh and the surrounding areas were affected, including 100,000 children. At least 2,946 people were killed and 5,674 were injured. Over 2,500 of the injured were seriously hurt while many fatalities occurred in remote locations south of Marrakesh. Climate change is having short- and long-term impacts on surface and groundwater in the northern part of the African continent. The most noticeable impacts of climate change, which have been widely studied and discussed by a great number of scientific papers, are mainly related to surface water quality and quantity changes. North-African countries are facing numerous environmental challenges related mainly to water scarcity issues, as the major economic sectors, especially agriculture, are extremely vulnerable to current climate sensitivity. Indeed both climate change and the earthquakes unveil an uncertain future all of which demand utmost attention from humans.